Earls Court Living
Nevern Square
Nevern Square is a garden square between Earls Court Road and Warwick Road. The buildings are mainly four-storey red-brick houses in a terrace. The garden square has several large mature trees and a very large lawn. It is a large square with a very spacious feel to it.
This was part of the Edwardes Estate. The Metropolitan Board of Works had agreed to a straightforward grid of streets. In 1877 Lord Kensington added the proposal for a garden square. This was approved, and in 1880 Robert Whittaker, a builder from North Kensington, was granted the rights to build the new square.
Whittaker had already built houses in Nevern Place in the mid 1870s, where he had used a basically classical style. But for the new houses he adopted the new Domestic Revival Style. The designs were provided by Walter Graves. The houses had four main storeys above basements. They were designed also to have attic storeys but these were generally omitted when the houses were built. The central and end houses had more accentuated roofs with ornate gables (some of which have dormer windows). The façades are in yellow and red brick with a special feature made of the first and second floor windows, which are given the appearance of pediments.
Whittaker began work on the east side of the square in 1880. Construction began on the north side in 1881 and on the south side in 1883. Work had only just started on the west side of the square in 1885 when Whittaker died. The business was then carried on by his wife. Most of the houses were complete, except on the west side. George Whittaker, who must have been a relative, built the houses on the west side for Mrs Whittaker in 1885-6. The façades of the west houses are to a rather different design, with a more conventional appearance.
After the First World War, houses began to be divided into flats. In the Second World War, houses on the north side were destroyed and had to be rebuilt later (for example, Rupert House at Nos. 52-57).
